Analysis vs. Analytics

Often, we might hear the words – Analysis and Analytics – being interchanged in our usage. Are they quite similar? The answer is no. There’s a fine line of difference between these two terms. Here are my two cents 🙂

Analysis is a way to interpret the data and derive meaningful insights from the data. Essentially, you may use the analytical tools such as Microsoft Excel to plot the graph, pivot, chart to delve into the subject of interest. Let’s take a very simple example: Your executive wants to know, “Who are the top 10 salesforce folks who exceeded the targets this year in U.S. region?”. Well, you can extract the U.S. sales data from the tool and sort it by descending order to arrive at the top 10. Your leadership team might think of a surprise gift vouchers to them as a token of hard-work and determination!

Analytics: This also holds true in deriving meaningful insights from the data. The difference is, analytics involves statistical tools & techniques with business acumen to bring out the hidden patterns, stories from the data. I would say analysis is a sub-set of analytics whereas the latter involves some complex techniques to solve the problem. Ex: Google recommends you search ideas when you start typing your keywords. Let’s say, you want to know “how to make a website”. Google has the search data from your country’s demographics who had already searched about the similar keywords. Using machine learning algorithm in real-time, your search query is suggested by the search engine before you complete the keywords!

In a nutshell, Analytics = Business + Statistics (Applied Maths) + Computer Programming. Using the statistical tools & techniques, a business problem is solved and that’s analytics for you guys!

Next time, if somebody switches these two terms, ensure you get it clarified! It doesn’t change the context drastically but technically you should be well informed about the discussion points.

If you have any questions or anything to be shared, please write it in the comments section below. I look forward to hear from you.